As the week ends, the news about the COVID-19 is not good. The number of new cases is continuing to increase. You are looking at this blog on some sort of electronic device, and it responds almost instantaneously to what you want to do. Biological systems are much slower to react. A crude analogy would be a click of your mouse is recognized two weeks later. You would be frustrated. That is what is currently happening with COVID-19. If a person becomes infected, it will be two weeks before they know that fact. It’s made worse by the fact that the virus is invisible. The relatively long delay and the fact that it’s invisible raises our level of anxiety. The fact that the virus can cause death also raises our level of stress.
What can we do? We can practice “social distancing.” We can wash our hands. Those seem to be the only concrete steps we can take. We can find comfort in our families. We can talk to our children about the virus to lessen their anxiety. Whatever our faiths, we can pray. We can let those we love know that fact. We can call or text them and say, “I love you” if we are not personally with them. However, we can say that to our spouses and hug them. We can say that to our children, and depending on their age, we might be able to embrace them. Teenagers seem averse to physical parental expressions of love. However, we can always let them know we love them verbally. Given the uncertainty of our current lives, we need to say those three words at least once a day to those we love.
